


Severing Ties

by In_My_Head



Category: Harry Potter (Marauder Era), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, marauders - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_My_Head/pseuds/In_My_Head
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily had known there would be repercussions when she finally made the decision to cut Severus out of her life. She hadn't known they would be quite this bad...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Severing Ties

**Author's Note:**

> It's my first fic ever, guys! Comments (constructive!) are more than welcome.

Lily had known there would be repercussions when she finally made the decision to cut Severus out of her life. First off, she knew it would hurt. She had lost a best friend before, and that had hurt a great deal. But losing Petunia as a playmate and confidant had been very different from this, she realized. For one thing, she still went home and saw Tuney every summer, and although they were no longer as close as they had been, they were still sisters, blood, at the end of the day.

There was something different about losing a friend she had chosen and kept for herself. Severus had been the first person who knew she was a witch, and he had ushered her into the wizarding world with excitement and friendship. Recently, she hadn’t been at all sure what she wanted from Severus. At the moment she wanted to cling to him and slap him and kiss him and shake some sense into him all at once. It was probably a good thing he had left before he had gotten a chance to see her break down like this.

Lily's sheer anger with him had carried her through the conversation with Severus outside the portrait hole. Even know, as she crouched on the ground with her arms wrapped around her knees, unable to stop sobbing or even breathe properly, she knew she had been right to cut ties with him. She and Severus had chosen separate paths long ago, and it was time. The cool, logical part of her brain had been telling her for months that this friendship between her, a muggle-born, and he, a budding death-eater, was an impossibility. In fact, she knew it could place her in a great deal more danger once they graduated and were living outside Hogwarts’ walls.

This afternoon by the lake, everything had clicked into place for Lily, as it had been threatening to do for some months (years?). She had finally realized that his friends and his stupid decisions and his morbid fascination with the dark arts weren’t just Severus being his quirky self at Hogwarts. A war was brewing, and his decisions were going to affect his and her future in a very real way. She understood that he had been humiliated and angry because of Potter and that idiot Black, but when he had yelled that she was a Moodblood in front of God and the whole school, he had belied one of the first promises he had ever made to her.

 _“Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?”_ Lily still remembered asking it, feeling apprehensive.  
Snape had hesitated, but in the end he had answered her. _“No,”_ he had said. _“It doesn’t make any difference.”_

She wondered if he even remembered that conversation from so many years ago. She wondered if it was playing over and over again in his head as it was in hers. Memories were funny that way. One might expect her to be dwelling on the memory of this afternoon by the lake. But she had gotten over that relatively quickly, whatever she had told Snape. It was almost like she had known it was coming. No, she kept remembering eleven, twelve, and thirteen year-old Snape and Lily. Friends in a simpler time, when they used to play together every day during summer vacation and contentedly complain about how they couldn't use their magic for a whole two months.

Lily returned to the present when she heard a soft knock at her door. She had locked herself into some classroom after her conversation with Severus this evening. After Severus had slunked off, slope-shouldered and crying (although he had tried to hide the fact from Lily), she had felt all her anger drain away suddenly. It had finally hit her that it was over, because there was no coming back from what happened today, and what she had just said to Severus. She had walked back in through the portrait hole and seen the few people up late studying in the common room, and she had realized that she could not face the girls' dormitory just yet. Lily focused on her breathing for a few minutes, and then scrambled back out of the portrait hole and ran full-tilt down the hall, oppisite the direction she had just seen Snape go. As she looked around now for the first time, she realized that she was in the Potions classroom. How horribly fitting.

Lily did not answer the door. Instead, her breathing grew ragged once more and a quiet sob escaped her mouth. Whoever had been knocking apparently took that as permission to enter. Lily did not know who to expect, because she thought nobody had seen her running through the halls in the middle of the night. It was a testament to her utter exhaustion that she did not even baulk when Sirius Black entered the room and closed the door behind him.


End file.
